Category Archives: Judaism

The Blood Libel Was Always About Denying Jewish Freedom

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The blood libel begins with how the Book of Exodus is misremembered. Exodus is a story of Jewish liberation, yet antisemites preserve it as a story of punishment. That inversion is not confusion but tradition. Every generation dresses the libel in new language, while the structure never changes.

The plagues were directed at dismantling Egyptian authority with precision. The opening strike hit the Nile—Egypt’s god, economy, and source of life—and exposed a crime already committed there. Egypt had drowned Israelite infants in that river to erase a future it feared. The first plague named that bloodshed and stripped Egypt of moral order.

What followed was escalation with restraint. Egypt lost land, productivity, and cosmic claims. Darkness collapsed Pharaoh’s divine authority. What remained was the empire’s final refuge: the belief that continuity would return, that tomorrow would repair what today exposed.

The final plague took it. The death of the firstborn judged a state that had already made children expendable. It revoked Egypt’s claim on the future. Regimes that destroy children forfeit moral legitimacy. Measure followed measure.

The Israelites did not celebrate death. They marked their doors, stayed inside, and departed at dawn. Their defining act was escape from bloodlust, not indulgence in it. Freedom—not punishment—was the center of the story.

Antisemitism begins by erasing that fact.

Across centuries, Jews were remembered not as a people who fled violence but as a people who embodied it. Divine judgment on a tyrannical state was detached from context and reassigned as a permanent Jewish trait. Victims became perpetrators. Liberation became threat. From this inversion, the blood libel followed naturally, and not surprisingly, during Jewish celebrations of Passover when they left Egypt.

Anti-Israel protestors frame Jews as Christ killers and invert reality stating Jesus was a Palestinian instead of a Jew

The charge did more than justify violence; it recoded Jews as a permanent danger. If society believes Jews possess bloodlust, then Jews must be watched, monitored, restricted, and scrutinized. They become an unwanted risk. Suspicion overwhelms citizenship. Surveillance replaces equality. In this logic, it is only a matter of time before Jews are assumed to act—and preemptive punishment becomes rationalized as self-defense.

This is how the libel works. It marks Jews forever as dangerous rather than as people who long for freedom. It recasts victims as villains and turns survival itself into evidence of guilt. The blood libel means that Jews are never trusted as equals, and never accepted as free.

That inheritance governs today’s rhetoric. Calling Jews “baby killers” is not a factual claim; it is the inherited reflex of a culture that never accepted Jewish freedom. The accusation is identity-based, not evidence-based. It exists to keep Jews outside the circle of legitimate humanity and to deny the moral standing of Jewish self-defense before it is even asserted.

Turkey fans the blood libel in Hamas’s latest war to destroy Israel

This mindset survives because it is passed down, laundered through new vocabulary, and presented as moral concern. But it is the same lie. It refuses to see Jews as a people who escaped societies that murdered their children and insists instead on seeing Jews as the source of murder itself.

The story that antisemitism started when Pharoah forgot Joseph and became worried about the growing number and power of Jews was the fear of a monarch. Antisemitism was instilled in the masses when the Exodus story was flipped that Jews had a bloodlust and didn’t deserve equality. Every society that accepted the libel eventually convinced itself that Jewish freedom was intolerable—and acted accordingly.

Ending Evil Is Not Revenge

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Pharaoh stood unmoved as the Nile turned to blood.
Life-giving water became useless overnight, and the system held.
That moment captured the moral reality of the Exodus.

The plagues were not revenge. They were not emotional retaliation for suffering already endured. And they were not even, in the narrow sense, punishment for evil deeds. They were something far more deliberate: the dismantling of a system that could not be allowed to continue.

That distinction matters—then and now.

Revenge, Punishment, and Dismantlement

Revenge is backward-looking. It seeks emotional satisfaction for injury.
Punishment is judicial. It assigns guilt and imposes consequences.
Dismantlement is future-oriented. It exists to make continued evil impossible.

The plagues fit only the third category.

They were announced in advance. They escalated slowly. It wasn’t rage. It didn’t aim at humiliation. The Torah goes out of its way to show a paced methodology.

Even “punishment” does not fully explain what happens. Punishment targets perpetrators. The plagues targeted foundations: economy, theology, nature, and political myth. The Nile, the body, the sky—everything Egypt relied on to project permanence was stripped away piece by piece.

Why? Because slavery was not a policy failure within Egypt.
It was Egypt.

You cannot reform a system built on domination. You cannot shame it. You cannot negotiate it out of existence. You have to break the assumptions that make it feel eternal.

That is what the plagues did. They delivered a message: “You are not absolute—and the time for evil has ended.”

The Same Moral Error Reappears Today

That same confusion appears again in the way Israel’s war in Gaza is discussed.

Since October 7, critics have insisted that Israel is acting out of revenge, wounded pride, or collective punishment. That reading repeats the same error people make about the plagues: it projects human emotion onto a campaign that is structural in nature.

If Israel were seeking revenge, Gaza would already be erased.
If this were punishment, the war would end with confessions and symbolic justice.

Neither is happening.

Israel is trying to end a war by dismantling the system that made it inevitable.

Hamas is not a fringe militia. It is the elected majority of the Palestinian parliament and ruling authority in Gaza. It is immensely popular. Over years, it constructed a comprehensive war society: tunnels beneath homes, schools, and mosques; civilian infrastructure fused with military command; education and media organized around eradication; international aid converted into weapons. Violence was not a breakdown. It was the operating principle.

As in Egypt, brutality was not an abuse within the system.
It was the system.

You cannot coexist with that indefinitely. You cannot contain it forever. You cannot pause it and hope it reforms while leaving its foundations intact.

Why Ending the System Is Not Cruelty

Calls for ceasefire without dismantlement may sound compassionate but mirror Pharaoh’s promises: temporary relief with permanent structures preserved. The Torah teaches us to distrust that move. Pauses without transformation merely reset the cycle.

Israel’s campaign is not about humiliation. It is about limits. No governing authority may embed genocide into its ideology. No regime gains immunity by hiding behind civilians. No society organized around death gets an unlimited future.

Ending such a system is not revenge.
It is moral necessity.

Archaeology of Daily Life: Mikva’ot and Jewish Indigeneity in the Land the UN Calls “Occupied”

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Modern political language compresses history into slogans. The United Nations speaks of “occupied Palestinian territory,” which it insists be Jew-free. The “pro-Palestinian” movements echo false claims of Jewish colonialism, as if Jews are newcomers.

Archaeology answers differently—through the infrastructure of everyday life.

Across Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee, ancient mikva’ot—Jewish ritual immersion baths—appear in homes, villages, farms, and neighborhoods. They date from the First Temple and Second Temple periods and into the Mishnaic era. Their construction follows strict Jewish law. Their distribution tracks permanent settlement. Their purpose is singular: Jews lived here as a rooted society, organizing life around inherited religious practice.

This is not an argument from ideology. It is a statement of fact.

Jerusalem—Including the East: A City Immersed

Jerusalem contains the highest concentration of ancient mikva’ot anywhere in the world, with hundreds surrounding the Jewish Temple Mount as people immersed themselves before entering. In the City of David—today known as Silwan, a village established by Yementite Jews in the 19th century—dozens of ritual baths are embedded in residential quarters dated from the 1st century BCE to 70 CE. North and east of the later city walls, mikva’ot appear in neighborhoods now called Shuafat and Sheikh Jarrah, including the Shimon HaTzadik complex. The ancient mikvahs are also found to the west and south.

Mikvah under the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem

Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron, summarizing decades of excavation, write:

“The widespread distribution of ritual baths in and around Jerusalem reflects strict observance of Jewish purity laws as part of everyday life.”

These installations predate Islam by centuries. They show a city whose rhythm followed Jewish law across its full geographic footprint—west and east alike.

Judea: Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, and the Southern Hills

South of Jerusalem, the Judean Hills—now routinely labeled “occupied”—were a Jewish heartland in antiquity. Around Bethlehem, archaeological surveys identify rock-hewn mikva’ot associated with agricultural estates and villages from the Hasmonean and Herodian periods. Comparable installations appear near Hebron and Tekoa.

Mikvah in Jericho

Boaz Zissu’s regional studies conclude:

“Ritual baths, agricultural installations, and burial caves indicate dense Jewish settlement throughout the Judean Hills during the Second Temple period.”

These were family communities organized around Jewish practice, embedded in the land over generations.

Samaria: Villages of Law and Land

In Samaria—today’s northern “West Bank”—mikva’ot appear in rural villages and estates tied to farming and household life. Near Shiloh, stepped pools carved into limestone meet halakhic requirements and date to the late Second Temple period.

These finds demonstrate continuity between biblical Israelite centers and later Jewish communities. They record a population living according to inherited law, rooted to fields and seasons, long before later demographic changes.

What Mikva’ot Prove

Mikva’ot appear only where Jewish law structured daily behavior. They require permanence, planning, and communal norms. They cluster where families lived and expected their children to live.

Plotted together, they form a map that predates:

  • Arabic language in the region
  • Creation of Islam
  • Medieval and modern political boundaries

They belong to a Jewish civilization indigenous to the land for centuries before the Arab conquests of the seventh century.

Conclusion

International bodies can rename the land and activists can repeat slander but archaeology restores history to human scale. Mikva’ot record where Jews prepared for worship, marriage, birth, and community life. They mark neighborhoods, not narratives.

Across all of Jerusalem and through Judea and Samaria, these ritual baths establish a simple historical truth: Jews are indigenous to this land, and their daily life shaped it long before later conquests and long before modern politics.

Stop Running. Stop Defending.

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The Torah’s first image of Moses is of a man split against himself. Born a Hebrew and raised in Pharaoh’s palace, he lives between worlds. When he kills an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, the act is instinctive. Yet when another Hebrew confronts him—“Who made you ruler and judge over us?” (Exodus 2:14)—Moses has no answer. He cannot say who he is or why he has the right to act.

So he runs.

The flight is explained as fear of Pharaoh because the attack was discovered. A deeper cause is identity fracture. Moses is caught between Egyptian and Jew, insider and outsider. When identity is unsettled, even a disgraceful question feels existential. Retreat becomes the reflex.

That pattern did not end in Egypt.

Today, for much of the diaspora, Jewish life has carried a similar split. Jews learned to survive by blending, qualifying, and softening. Identity became situational. Answers changed with the room. When questioned—about history, belonging, or the land of Israel—the instinct has often been Moses’ instinct: explain carefully, hedge, or leave the room. Running becomes habit when the self feels divided.

Israel changes that equation.

Israeli Jews do not experience Jewishness as a negotiation. It is civic, cultural, linguistic, and historical all at once. There is no internal argument to resolve before answering an external challenge. Questions that unsettle diaspora Jews rarely destabilize Israelis because the identity beneath them is settled.

Kotel Plaza with Israeli flag (photo: First One Through)

The philosophical approach even applies to non-Jews in Israel. Consider Quentin Tarantino, who married an Israeli, lives in Israel, and raises his children there without explanation or apology. His life models something diaspora Jews are rarely encouraged to try: resolve the split by living a whole integrated self rather than defending it. Belonging practiced instinctually requires no justification.

That clarity was shown clearly in Tarantino’s 2003 film Kill Bill: Vol. 1. In the film, O-Ren Ishii responds to an attack on her heritage immediately and violently. She recognizes the move as an attempt to diminish her and rejects the premise entirely. The table turns the instant she stops answering the charge and starts judging the judge.

For diaspora Jews—and for anyone of mixed heritage—the lesson is continuity. Identity settled internally removes the need for fleeing externally. When the self is whole, interrogation loses its force. Disgraceful questions do not deserve better answers; they deserve exposure and repudiation.

Moses ran because his identity was divided while modern Israelis do not.
O-Ren stands because she knows exactly who she is and will not entertain accusers.

Diaspora Jews today should not need to relive Moses’ uncertainty of self. The work now is not to run, but firmer clarity. Better education and rootedness. Firmer responses.

Stop running.
Stop defending.
Condemn the question—and the room will follow.

Blessing and Inheritance

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The story at the end of the Book of Genesis has an interesting lesson for Jews today.

If Jacob’s sons had remained in Canaan, the biblical pattern likely would have continued unchanged. Land and cattle anchored wealth, security, and continuity, and survival depended on concentration. In such an environment, inheritance narrowed toward a single heir capable of holding territory together through famine and conflict. Until this point, Genesis follows that logic closely, moving from Abraham to Isaac, from Isaac to Jacob, and nearly from Jacob to Joseph.

Canaan seemingly reinforced singular succession.

Egypt reshaped it.

The famine drained land of its defining value and redirected survival toward provision. In Egypt, Goshen mattered because it was allocated rather than owned. Jacob’s family entered as dependents, albeit under the protection of a senior official. With land no longer functioning as the primary store of value relative to neighbors, inheritance lost its organizing role. What carried forward instead was character and capacity.

Jacob recognized the shift and adapted to it. His final blessings did not distribute assets or authority but identity. Leadership, resilience, intensity, cohesion, adaptability—each son was seen for what he could contribute rather than what he would receive. Blessing became formative rather than transactional, oriented toward coexistence rather than accumulation.

This evolution reflected Jacob’s own hard-earned understanding. Early in life, he secured a singular blessing that concentrated destiny in one person and fractured a family in the process. Now, with seventy descendants – coming from different mothers – preparing to live together under pressure, he understood that continuity required a new orientation. Blessings and inheritance had to evolve if brothers were going to coexist in exile. Differentiation replaced rivalry, and identity replaced estate.

That shift allowed a family to become a people. Survival came to depend on shared memory, distinct roles, and collective endurance. The covenant moved through people rather than property, and the biblical story never narrowed again to a single bearer.

Jacob blessing his sons by Adam van Noort (1561–1641)

For nearly two thousand years, Jewish history unfolded within that framework. Without land, Jews carried blessing as portable identity—education, law, ethics, aspiration. Children were blessed for what they might become, not for what they would inherit. That model sustained continuity across dispersion, persecution, and renewal.

History has turned again.

Since 2008, a plurality of world Jewry lives once more in the land of Israel. Concentration has returned. Land, sovereignty, and inheritance are tangible again, not symbolic. The Jewish people find themselves in the inverse position of Parshat Vayechi: no longer learning how to survive without land, but learning how to live with it again after centuries of absence.

Jacob understood that blessings and inheritance had to change in order for brothers to live together in the diaspora. This moment demands a parallel act of wisdom. The task of this generation is to pass on collective and individual inheritances which will hold both realities at once: rootedness in the land of Israel alongside the moral, intellectual, and spiritual capital forged in exile. The next generation must receive blessings that affirm individual potential and an inheritance that binds those differences into a shared future.

That synthesis—blessing and land together—is the challenge of our time.

The Dry Tree

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Jewish tradition returns again and again to the image of the tree. Sometimes it appears strong and fruit-bearing. At other moments it is reduced, cut back, or left without water. The image endures because it carries history within it—growth shaped by interruption, life that continues through constraint.

The prophets reached for this language when ordinary description failed them.

“They shall be like a tree planted in the desert, that does not sense the coming of good.” – Jeremiah 17:6

“Let not the barren one say: ‘I am a dry tree.’” – Isaiah 56:3

The statement reframes the moment. What looks final and foreboding is often incomplete. The future has not yet spoken.

That tension—between appearance and essence—finds a physical echo in the hills west of Jerusalem, where Yad Kennedy rises from the forest. The memorial marks a life interrupted mid-growth. John F. Kennedy’s presidency and life ended before its natural arc could unfold, and the monument holds that sense of unrealized promise. Surrounded by trees planted in rocky soil, it resembles a tree stump, and invites reflection on lives cut short and on continuity carried forward by those who remain.

Yad Kennedy in Jerusalem Forest

Jewish history has unfolded along similar lines. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Judaism reorganized itself without sovereignty or familiar institutions. Across centuries of dispersion, it adapted under pressure, preserving learning and community in constrained forms. Growth did not disappear; it compressed, waiting for conditions that would allow it to expand again.

This persistence appears vividly in the work of Dr. Mark Podwal (1945-2024). His drawings return repeatedly to the Jewish tree—scarred, truncated, shaped by time. The branches rise unevenly, carrying memory in their grain. Life continues without erasing what came before. Growth is real precisely because it bears the marks of history.

That image resonated deeply with Rabbi Yehuda Amital (1924-2010), founding Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Gush Etzion. A survivor of the Holocaust, Rav Amital rebuilt his world through Torah that could hold rupture and responsibility together. His leadership reflected patience, moral seriousness, and a belief that renewal emerges gradually from damaged ground.

Podwal once gave Rav Amital a drawing of a truncated Jewish tree—reduced in form, yet unmistakably alive, blooming with the promise of a renewed Judaism. The rabbi transformed the image into a small sticker and placed it inside the books of his personal library. Every volume bore the same mark.

Drawing by Mark Podwal about Jewish life springing forth from Jewish texts, used as a sticker in the library of Rav Yehuda Amital (photo: First One Through)

The image spoke directly to his life’s work. Rav Amital played a central role in rebuilding the Gush Etzion community after it was destroyed in the 1948–49 War of Independence, a war in which he fought shortly after moving to the land of Israel after his family was slaughtered in Auschwitz. In the hills south of Jerusalem, homes had been razed, residents killed or expelled, and the area left barren. The return after the 1967 Six Day War was careful and deliberate, rooted in learning, faith, and responsibility. A community grew again where one had been cut down.

Each time Rav Amital opened a book, the image reinforced that lesson. Torah study itself became an act of regrowth.

Rav Amital had the original Podwal drawing framed and placed on the wall of his home. (photo: First One Through)

That insight extends far beyond one community.

In the Land of Israel, Jewish roots run beneath history itself—through exile and return, ruin and rebuilding. Torah and Jewish presence were never uprooted from this land. They were compressed, covered, narrowed to fragments. Learning continued in small circles, in whispered prayers, in constrained spaces. At times the surface appeared barren. Beneath it, roots remained alive.

This is why Jewish life and learning in Israel carry a distinctive quality of reemergence. Yeshivot rise where silence once prevailed. Communities form on ground that held ruins. Torah is studied again in places where the chain of learning was abruptly broken. To the unobservant eye, it can appear improbable—as though life has emerged from wood long dried. To those who understand the depth of Jewish connection to this land, to the Jewish texts which form the basis of Judaism, it is recognition rather than surprise.

The dry tree was never dead. It was waiting.

Jewish continuity does not require ideal conditions. Where roots reach deep enough, water is eventually found. Growth resumes in forms shaped by everything that came before.

Brooklyn Chanukah Donut Crawl 2025

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As the first evening and last night of Chanukah were on Sundays, we are posting this blog a bit late, as we could only make it out to Brooklyn for the second Sunday. Despite being late to the festivities, we had a very aggressive agenda (below in planned order of the route):

  • Ostrovitsky Bakery, 1124 Avenue J, Brooklyn, NY 11230
  • Pomegranate Supermarket, 1507 Coney Island Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11230
  • Sesame – Flatbush, 1540 Coney Island Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11230
  • Taste of Israel, 1322 Avenue M, Brooklyn, NY 11230
  • Patis Bakery, 1716 Avenue M, Brooklyn, NY 11230
  • Schreiber’s Homestyle Bakery, 424 Avenue M, Brooklyn, NY 11230
  • Viva La Dough, 501 Avenue M, Brooklyn, NY 11230
  • LUNCH: Sunflower Cafe, 1223 Quentin Rd, Brooklyn, NY 11229
  • Pita Sababa, 540 Kings Hwy, Brooklyn, NY 11223
  • Taam Eden Bakery, 4603 13th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11219
  • Weiss Kosher Bakery, 5011 13th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11219
  • XMAS LIGHTS: Dyker Heights Christmas Lights

As Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof, “sounds crazy, no?”

Reality (sugar rush and other responsibilities) crashed on us and we didn’t make it through the entire list but here are the reviews.

A public announcement before beginning – be prepared. Bring water bottles and some other items like plates, plastic knives and wipes. Quartering the donuts is a must if you want a healthy sampling.

Donut crawl “kit”

Ostrovitsky’s Bakery

Last year, we came to Ostrovitsky’s in the afternoon and they were out of some of their best flavors, including chocolate mousse, napoleon and rosemarie, so we came here first. We picked up one of each, an Oreo and a plain jelly (we were seven people).

Before getting into the flavor and quality of each, I want to share that as opposed to prior years when we arrived at the beginning of the holiday to fight large lines, there was no line here or any pandemonium at the other stores. Eight days of deep fried foods must tap the strength of even the greatest Maccabee.

We made a new friend at the store, a caterer, who very much likes the bakery and shared a story how many bakeries actually get their sufganiyut (filled donuts) from Ostrovitsky’s.

The chocolate mousse was the biggest fan favorite of the reviewers, deeper in flavor than the lighter rosemarie. The napoleon actually tasted like a napoleon- not a donut, which isn’t necessarily a bad mark but wasn’t expected. The jelly and Oreo were both good.

selection from Ostrovitsky’s bakery

Pomegranate

The big supermarket had a wide variety this year. This year’s selection was good. However, the plain jelly was watery and the “long john” variety had little jelly in it.

The halvah was good but other bakeries were much better.

Selection of donuts from Pomegranate

Pita Sababa

We were lucky to have friends get to Brooklyn before us and pick up a selection at Pita Sababa before we got there on the itinerary, as it is not close to the other bakeries and often has a line. The sampling was fantastic! The halvah was simply outrageous – with lacy halvah on top and rich full flavor inside.

Donuts from Pita Sababa

The caramel was okay as was the plain sugar coated. The Dubai Chocolate was divine with great flavor and fullness of filling. It hit the top place this year, knocking Sesame for the first time in our seven year crawl.

Sesame

Sesame has been top of the charts for each of our crawls since 2019. This year, it continued to impress, with plentiful varieties and flavors in both pareve and dairy. People buy them buy the dozens – literally.

Donuts from Sesame in Brooklyn

Patis Bakery

We stopped into Patis for lunch (as well as Koma sushi) and to try just one donut – a dairy cookies and cream. It was light and flavorful. There wasn’t a very big selection of donuts, and they don’t make them at the location as they do in the other bakeries, so we were very satisfied in light of the difficult competition.

Pareve donuts at Patis
Dairy donuts at Patis

Schreiber’s Homestyle Bakery

We got a few dairy donuts at Schreiber’s, and lace cookies which we consider the best in the category. The strawberry was fine and the marshmallow wasn’t very good, especially as we had it the following day.

Schreiber’s donuts

Viva La Dough

Viva La Dough was new to our crawl. It did not disappoint. The dough was excellent – even the following morning which is unheard of for sufganiyut. The tiramasu was light and airy – they way you would expect. The coffee filling was tasty, as though you were eating an expensive dessert at a restaurant.

Tiramasu donut and the inside of a creamy strawberry jelly – almost tasted like a cream cheese and jelly sandwich – from Viva La Dough

We ran out of energy and did not make it to Taam Eden or Weiss’s Bakery. Taste of Israel had no donuts for walk in.

Overall

As this was our seventh year of the crawl, we have pruned the poorer bakeries and now left with only good selections. Pita Sababa’s Dubai chocolate and halvah were the rockstars of the day. Sesame continues to do well with pistachio, nutella, peanut butter, but some did not like the dairy milk lotus. We give high marks to Viva la Dough, even though the selection is lighter than the others.

Whether by Wisdom or Strength, One North Star

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Joseph and the Maccabees stand at opposite ends of Jewish history, yet they are oriented toward the same destination.

Joseph saved lives through wisdom. He read the moment correctly, understood power as it existed, and worked within it with discipline and restraint. His brilliance was not only in interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams but in translating vision into policy. Grain was stored since hunger was anticipated. Life survived because Joseph learned how to operate inside a dominant civilization without surrendering his inner compass.

The Maccabees faced a different landscape. Jewish practice itself was under assault, the Temple desecrated, identity mocked and criminalized. In that moment, preservation required action of a different kind. Physical courage and sacrifice to restore the possibility of Jewish continuity. Their strength reopened a future that had been closing.

Both paths flow from the same conviction: Jewish life must continue.

That shared conviction matters more than the method used to defend it. Jewish tradition does not freeze history into a single playbook. It records multiple responses to pressure, exile, and threat, each shaped by its circumstances, each measured by whether it protects life and meaning.

This tension feels immediate today. Jews in Western societies sense the ground shifting beneath them. Institutions once assumed to be neutral now tolerate or excuse intimidation. Public expressions of Jewish identity invite scrutiny, hostility, or worse. Families quietly debate whether to double down on civic engagement, legal advocacy, and cultural participation, or whether to seek physical concentration, communal withdrawal, and in some cases departure altogether.

Jews gather at candle lighting ceremony in Carl Schurz Park in New York City, hours after the mass murder of Jews in Sydney Australia (photo: First One Through)

Both instincts draw from deep Jewish memory.

Some respond like Joseph, believing that wisdom, professionalism, and moral clarity can still carve out space within complex societies. Others hear the echo of the Maccabees and sense that when identity becomes negotiable, consolidation and self-defense are no longer optional.

The danger is not that Jews choose different strategies. The danger is losing sight of the common north star and turning strategy into accusation.

Chanukah, read alongside Parshat Miketz, offers a sobering reminder. Joseph’s Egypt eventually transforms from refuge into bondage. The Maccabees’ victory secures a moment of light, not a permanent settlement. Jewish history does not promise stability; it demands attentiveness. Survival in the long-term cannot happen without survival in the present.

Each generation inherits the same responsibility: to read its moment honestly, to choose its tools carefully, and to ensure that the flame continues—whether through wisdom, through strength, or through the careful discipline of knowing when to shift from one to the other.

Chabad Caught In a Thicket

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There are Jews who keep their heads down. And then there is Chabad.

From Bondi Beach to Mumbai, from Barcelona to American college campuses, Chabad does the opposite of what fear would counsel. It does not retreat inward. It goes outward—publicly, cheerfully, stubbornly—lighting candles, setting tables, opening doors.

And for that, it bleeds.

In Australia, Chabad helped organize a large public Chanukah gathering near Bondi Beach—sun, music, children, light. A Jewish holiday celebrated exactly as it was meant to be: openly, without apology. Antisemites came – because, as they say of bank robbers robbing banks – that’s where the Jews are. Violence came to eradicate the joy.

In India, Chabad paid an even heavier price. During the 2008 Mumbai attacks, terrorists deliberately sought out the Chabad House. This was not collateral damage in a geopolitical struggle between India and Pakistan. It was targeted slaughter. The rabbi and his wife were tortured and murdered because they were Jews—and because they were visible Jews, serving other Jews. The attackers bypassed many targets to reach them. They knew exactly who they were looking for.

This pattern repeats itself with chilling consistency. Chabad emissaries—shluchim—are not anonymous. They live openly as Jews in places where Jews are few, where governments barely register their presence, let alone prioritize their safety. Some countries have only dozens of Jews. Some have none at all, except for Chabad.

And still Chabad goes.

On Friday nights in Barcelona, Jewish life gathers around Chabad tables. Tourists, locals, students—many unaffiliated, many unsure—find Judaism not as a political identity or an abstract cause, but as food, song, wine, warmth. As Shabbat.

On university campuses across North America, Chabad events now regularly outshine Hillel. This is not accidental. Where Hillel has often drifted toward “wokeness,” flattening Judaism into a vague social-justice aesthetic, Chabad offers something older and sturdier: tradition without embarrassment. Commandments without footnotes. Jewish joy without ideological permission slips.

That, too, draws attention. And danger.

Chabad rabbis and their families know they wear a mark, and not metaphorically. They live without anonymity. They publish their addresses. They welcome strangers. They light menorahs in public squares at a moment in history when public Jewishness has been recast as a provocation.

Chabad lighting “the largest menorah” on the sixth night of Chanukah in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza in 2017 (photo: First One Through)

Chanukah, of all holidays, insists on this. It is not meant to be hidden. The lights are placed in windows, at doorways, facing the street. Pirsumei nisa—publicizing the miracle—is the law. Chabad takes it seriously, even when the risk feels immediate.

In a world where Jew-hatred has resurged with startling comfort, Chabad has become something else as well: exposed in the spotlight.

There is an old biblical image for this.

When Abraham is told to sacrifice Isaac, the knife is raised but the sacrifice is halted. Instead, a ram appears, caught in a thicket by its horns. The ram is offered in Isaac’s place.

Chabad, today, feels like that ram.

Silhouette of two Chabad men at a Chankah lighting ceremony on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, shortly after the massacre of Jews in Bondi Beach, Australia in December 2025. Just a few hundred feet away sits Gracie Mansion, soon-to-be home of New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who refuses to repudiate the phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” a call to kill diaspora Jews. (photo: First One Through)

Not because Chabad seeks martyrdom—it emphatically does not. It absorbs the blows meant for Jewish visibility itself. It becomes the target because it brings together Jews to celebrate Judaism with gladness – the ultimate point of inflammation for antisemites.

The world often says it wants Jews to be “normal.” Chabad refuses that bargain. It insists on being Jewish instead—fully, visibly, joyfully—even when the cost is high.

Chabad is not actually caught in a thicket; it takes its position openly. But antisemites hear a calling that is not divine but grotesque when they see joyful Jews, and are willing to sacrifice themselves and their sons – like the murderers of Bondi Beach – to feed the poisoned passion.

Stop With the Hanukkah Miracle and Declare the Hanukkah MESSAGE

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The Book of the Maccabees lays out that the war against the Jews did not start with violence but with policy. The Syrian-Greeks initiated the battle by denying Jews their right to religious practice. Jewish life was made illegal through decrees and prohibitions, through the quiet insistence that Jews no longer have standing in their own holiest spaces.

The Temple Mount was seized. Jewish worship was banned. Foreign rites were imposed in its place. The text is precise and unsparing:

“And forbid burnt offerings, and sacrifice, and drink offerings, in the temple; and that they should profane the sabbaths and festival days…. They set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar, and built idol altars throughout the cities of Juda on every side.”
—1 Maccabees 1:45, 1 Maccabees 1:54

When the Maccabees returned to Jerusalem, the devastation they witnessed was total. The enemies of the Jews intended humiliation. A holy place was turned into a ruin so complete that nature itself began to reclaim it.

“They saw the sanctuary desolate, the altar profaned, and the gates burned. In the courts shrubs had grown up as in a forest.”
— 1 Maccabees 4:38

Judas and his brothers refuse to accept erasure as permanent and took action:

“Then Judas and his brothers said: ‘Behold, our enemies are crushed. Let us go up to cleanse the sanctuary and dedicate it…. They tore down the altar and stored the stones in a suitable place on the temple hill until a prophet should come to tell what to do with them.”
— 1 Maccabees 4:36, 44–46
“They purified the sanctuary and made another altar of sacrifice… and offered burnt offerings according to the law….They celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days, and offered burnt offerings with gladness.“
— 1 Maccabees 4:48–56

And then memory was mandated.

“Judas and his brethren with the whole congregation of Israel ordained, that the days of the dedication of the altar should be kept in their season from year to year by the space of eight days, from the five and twentieth day of the month Casleu, with mirth and gladness.”
— 1 Maccabees 4:59

Why legislate remembrance? Why must it be done with joy?

Because danger does not end with victory nor complacency. The danger is forgetting how erasure begins—how denial of access precedes denial of life. Enemies rarely announce extermination at the start. They begin by declaring Jews illegitimate, unworthy of presence, unfit to practice their own traditions.

Guard blocks entry of a Jewish man onto the Jewish Temple Mount at the Cotton Merchant’s Gate, because he is a Jew, in November 2025. (Photo: First One Through)

The Maccabees understood something timeless: when Jews accept exclusion as normal, the battle has already been lost. When they are told to make do with less than basic human rights demand, they can never really have a full heart.

Hanukkah is the refusal to let others define Jewish legitimacy. It is the insistence that Jewish rights—to worship, to gather, to exist openly—are not privileges granted by empires or overseers, but as the opening lines of America’s Declaration of Independence state, “endowed by their Creator.”

So it was in their days. So it is in ours.